Head coach Gary Kubiak spoke to the media after practice on Thursday afternoon.
Head Coach Gary Kubiak *
*(on if there are any changes since Wednesday) "There's nothing new. We're just trying to get ready to play these guys. They're
very difficult to get ready to play; they do a lot of things on both sides of
the ball. They're very challenging, mentally, for your football team so we have
a lot of reps we have to get through yesterday and today, but nothing new."
(on how practice went today) "I thought it went good. We had one period that wasn't very good, but that's football and it probably wasn't good because of the mentally taxing situation that we put on our players as coaches right there. But we've got to do it to get ready to play this team because, like I said, they present so many issues for you."
(on the challenge of getting the team mentally prepared for the game) "This is as good a group as I've ever been around, and I've been a lot of good football teams. The NFL season is long and when you're not sitting here battling for a playoff spot or you're not an automatic playoff football team, I could see where it could be tough, but that has not been an issue with this football team. It's young; they're very energetic, a real 'feed me' type of group. They work as good as any team I've been around, and I've told y'all that. It's easy for teams to lose some focus because seasons get so long in the NFL, but these guys have been really good."
(on using the shotgun) "We'll see. We'll work on it a little bit. It kind of all depends on how we come out of practice. But in all honesty, it's something that we haven't done much of because it's something that we're trying to get (C) Drew (Hodgdon) used to. (C Mike) Flanagan did it well, and if you don't have confidence to do it, you just get back up under center and do the same things. Really, it just kind of all depends on how Drew handles it, but it is something that we work on all the time."
(on the status of WR Jerome Mathis and SS C.C. Brown for Sunday's game) "I just think that Mathis and C.C. are going to be both game-time decisions with where they're at right now. We'll see what happens tomorrow, and it could even be one of those deals where we work those two guys out on Sunday morning and go from there."
(on the status of FB Jameel Cook for Sunday's game and whether he could be placed on Injured Reserve) "Jameel's not playing this week. We're going to make a move with him. I don't
know if we'll make it this week or wait 'til next week; if we do, it would probably
be tomorrow. But he is going to have his knee scoped on Monday. He played with
it for us for probably seven or eight weeks and really battled it for us, but
(FB) Vonta (Leach) is doing a good job and it makes sense for us to go ahead and
get him healthy and get him ready for next year, so the plan is to scope the knee
on Monday."
*Click here for Texans' comments on the passing of Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt.
